Large sausage casings are generally manufactured from materials such as regenerated cellulose, or regenerated cellulose having fibrous webs embedded therein, and are employed in the manufacture of large sausage products such as salami and bologna sausages, spiced meat loafs, cooked and smoked ham butts and the like. Such large sausage casings are produced in flat widths ranging in size from about 2 to 15 inches and range in length from about 14 to 72 inches and longer. The large sausage casings most commonly used for commercial production of large sausage products range in size from about 3 to 8 inches in flat width and from about 18 to 72 inches in length.
In recent years, systems for automatically stuffing meats and food emulsions into casings in a continuous fashion have become well-known in the art. Such systems are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. Re. 30,390 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,077,090 and 4,164,057. Such systems commonly employ shirred tubular cellulosic food casings as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,983,949 and 2,984,574 to Matecki.
In the production of a large sausage product, a large sausage casing is first gathered over the end of a stuffing horn and then stuffed with a food emulsion. The thusly stuffed and encased food emulsion is subsequently cooked or cured according to conventional processes. Many of these large sausage products are thereafter sliced and packaged into units of predetermined weight and slice count for retail sale. The slicing devices employed in such packaging operations are pre-set to yield a specific weight-by-slice count for use in obtaining unit packages of equal weight. Since a large sausage casing stuffed with a food emulsion has two generally hemispherical or rounded ends, these rounded ends are generally not used in producing equal weight packages and are reworked (i.e., recycled in the production of a subsequent batch of food emulsion).
In order to minimize the rework resulting from these rounded ends, many prior attempts have been made to flatten them by utilizing a variety of methods and apparatus. While such attempts have attained some degree of success, none has proved to be entirely satisfactory. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,808,638 discloses a method for producing large sausage products having one pre-flattened end. Although this method reduces the sausage end rework by one-half, substantial rework is still present in the non-flattened end. As a further example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,777,331 discloses a method and apparatus for producing encased sausage with two flat ends whereby the end pieces are inserted in a non-fully automatic fashion. Such method and apparatus is limited to the use of continuous lengths of non-shirred casing, and does not lend itself to efficient commercial operation.
In the present invention a casing package article is provided that is useful in continuously and automatically producing large sausage products with substantially flat ends from shirred casings, thereby improving slice yield and avoiding or minimizing the rework associated with the rounded ends of conventional sausages.
This is accomplished by locating flat annular disks and a shirred casing on a tube sized to fit over, or to serve as, a stuffing horn. The article is kept in this condition until it is used. During use, casing deshirrs off of the tube over and about the disks. The disks are adapted to be fed at appropriate intervals off an end of the tube and into the deshirred casing for forming the flat leading and trailing ends of the sausage product.
Often the casing may contain an agent which, if exposed to the discs over time, will have a detrimental effect on the disks. Accordingly, in the present invention an arrangement is made which can prevent such exposure until the article is put into use.